TV reviews

Bottoms. Ha, ha!

Flaps. Hee, hee!

Repeat for 20 minutes and you’ve pretty much got The Sarah Silverman Program. That’s maybe a little unfair — but only a little.

The show’s one of those programmes you want to like. The idea of a successful and talented comedienne not getting a cookie cutter sitcom in which she’s just the regular girl next day looking for love (cf Jenny McCarthy and Jenny, et al) is one that I applaud.

Instead, Silverman’s put together something that’s a third It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, a third Beavis and Butthead and a third concentrated Ricky Gervais. At times, it’s pretty funny.

But most of the time it’s something that, if I were 18, I would love but since I’m getting on for twice that age now, I can’t help but think is a little childish.

So for being uniformly not awful, not boring but still not that great, The Medium is Not Enough declares The Sarah Silverman Program to be a two or ‘Partial Caruso’ on The Carusometer quality scale. A Partial Caruso corresponds to a show with two walk-on cameos by David Caruso. Despite not being given one-liners by the script writer, he will attempt to ad lib his own. Fortunately, network censors delete them on quality and taste grounds, leaving behind just a vague rictus grin by Caruso before each commercial break.

Handily enough for UK viewers, given that the series starts on Sky on Wednesday, it’s time for a third-episode verdict on The Dresden Files.

I decided not to go as far as episode five with the show because, frankly, I’m bored. It’s just so dull. Now it’s a rare sci-fi/fantasy/horror show that’s just plain dull. Even Friday The 13th: The Series was moderately interesting, even if it wasn’t exactly Shakespeare.

But The Dresden Files is dull.

I’m not quite sure why that should be. The scripts are quite imaginative – you can tell they’ve been adapted from books. The acting’s fine for the most part, with both Terrence Mann and Paul Blackthorne doing the best they can with what they’ve got. The creators have a reasonable pedigree, with Deep Space Nine and Andromeda under their collective belts.

It’s just not very interesting. It feels like it’s been through various committees at the SciFi Channel that have removed anything really new and original. The direction’s been bog standard. Character development and indeed characterisation have been pretty non-existent, sacrificed on the great altar of plot developments: I’ve no real feel for who these people are and why I should care about them.

Not wishing to hold up Smallville as a paradigm of well, anything really, but a typical Smallville episode is 40 minutes and only about 30 of that is dedicated to the plot – the rest is ongoing character development (albeit not very consistent character development). As a result, you care about the characters, even when there’s a rubbish plot. Here, 100% of the run-time is plot, with not so much as an errant line of dialogue dedicated to making anyone and their interactions with the other characters three dimensional.

So, for having consistently kept me neither interested nor repulsed, The Medium is Not Enough declares The Dresden Files to be a three or “Minor Caruso” on The Carusometer quality scale. A Minor Caruso corresponds to “a show in which David Caruso might guest star. He will speak each of his seven lines at half the proper speed in order to increase his on-screen time. A runner will have to be sent out halfway through filming to get some more cue cards, since he will have ripped them up prematurely in an effort to prove what a professional he is.”